Author Archives: Aaron Berger

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Nicholas Lockyers’ collage work distorts the human figure in response to out of balance priorities placed on the pursuit of external beauty. Death and Misfortune remain a constant throughout each piece, lending a certain gravity to the fairly familiar aesthetic of “collage culled from vintage illustration archives” which is kind of popular right now. Lockyers definitely has his own thing going on though. His particular selection of imagery is set at a pretty good pitch, and I dig the dark vibes. More snakes, skulls, and bats after the jump.

Cara DeAngelis paints found roadkill in “compositions that both pay homage to, and satirize 17th century Hunting Still Lifes”. “The still lifes and portraits of animals on aristocratic laps explore the long-standing confrontations between the domestic and the wild.” But DeAngelis’ black magic goes a little further than that. The artist, who takes care to incorporate the “Tragic and the Infantile” within her work, includes children’s toys and dolls in her compositions to create an “absurd union“- nostalgia vs. violent death, innocence vs. murder. These paintings are done in oil, which somehow seems appropriate for the heavy concept scale within DeAngelis’ work. Ms. DeAngelis received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2011.

Yuken Teruya skillfully cuts intricate trees and other shapes out of banal, everyday objects like dollar bills, toilet paper rolls, and cereal boxes. The artist completely transforms what usually amounts to trash into delicate, beautiful art. Really makes you reconsider which material objects are “special”. Even the things we constantly overlook are full of creative (and even spiritual) potential. Teruya has a new piece in a recently opened group show at Denver’s David B. Smith Gallery. (via)

You’ve probably seen the work of Berlin/Vancouver based collective eBoy (or that of someone biting their aesthetic) at some point. Svend Smital, Steffen Sauerteig, and Kai Vermehr make up the core of the group, and they’ve created their very own world full of pixelated characters and environments through years of illustration, design, and animation work. The eBoy vision is pretty much fully realized, now everyone gets to enjoy taking part in it. The pattern design above is particularly amazing.

Want to see more by eBoy? Check out our exclusive feature on them as well as the cover art they created specially for us in Beautiful/Decay Issue:G

Organic life is almost completely absent from Tomasso Sartori’s photographs. Instead, we’re left with sparse, apocalyptic images washed in glaring red and stifling shadow. The people-less landscapes remain defiantly intact, as if to say “we existed before you, and we’ll keep going long after you’re gone”. A nice reminder of the strength and majesty of our natural surroundings. Too often, we lapse into a flawed impression that we are the most important force in the world. Sartori’s pictures correct that mistake pretty quickly. (via)

Illustrator and comics artist Jesse Lonergan is drawing a “Dancer a Day”. Every day, he draws an icon from movies, music, cartoons, pop culture, etc. in a “dancing pose”. He posts the quick sketches to his “Dancer a Day” blog. Just a really fun, loose project. Who doesn’t dig the image of a groovy Hannibal Lecter or a b-boy Gonzo? What about a super fab “The Dude”, or Godzilla and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man cutting a rug on top of a metropolis? Some more selections after the jump and head over to the page itself, where Lonergan’s already amassed a pretty large collection of dancers. (via)

“Lines between the organic and the man-made become blurred and a larger narrative is evoked.”

There’s a lot going on in Allison Renshaw’s paintings, so take a second to breathe. Renshaw, who received an MFA from MICA, lives and works in Encinitas, California. Her works create a “universe…that is seemingly random and difficult to decipher. This chaotic quality becomes a visualization of today’s open-source culture of sampling and recycling.” I love that element of controlled chaos with these. She definitely pulls it off. Renshaw is represented by Quint Contemporary Art in La Jolla, CA.

Berlin based artist Mariana Vassileva creates a really wide variety of sculpture. Some of the artist’s work references various forms of human anatomy while others are broad, dubious abstractions. The common denominator here is Vassileva’s meditative influence. Each work is quietly meaningful. Not many of the artist’s works hit you over the head with huge scale or overtly shocking subject matter. But that’s not to say that the sculptures are watered down in any way. Each piece hits it’s mark through subtle repetition and minimalism. (via)